Ms Margaret Urwin:

I thank the Deputy, who asks many very important questions. I will deal with Belturbet first. Unfortunately, Belturbet is one of the cases that I mentioned in the opening statement that are in a limbo situation like other cases that we have, as there are a number of cases that are not part of Operation Denton. The documentary has been shown twice on RTÉ. Since it was shown, I have been in meetings with the families and with the Garda in Monaghan about this. I said that we were making some progress initially. I sent somebody forward who thought they might have some information to provide and that person did go and make a statement to gardaí.

I have had quite a lot of communications with the superintendent since then. Unfortunately, I have not heard anything in many weeks, so I am not sure what is happening with the case. It could be one of the civil cases, but we will have to find out first whether the Dublin and Monaghan bombings will be admissible in the High Court in Belfast, in terms of both jurisdiction and time limits. The matter will again come before the court later this month. Nothing can happen with the other cases because there is no point in putting forward our case if a decision is made by the court that the Dublin and Monaghan case is not admissible. That is where that stands, unfortunately, with many other cases.

I appeared before the committee with Thomas Leahy in 2019, when he made many recommendations. To the best of my knowledge, none of those recommendations has been implemented. I certainly have not been informed if they have been. There was to be a parallel historical investigations unit, HIU, under the Stormont House Agreement, but the British Government has reneged on that, as Mr. Brecknell set out. The Stormont House Agreement was agreed to by both Governments and all political parties in Northern Ireland apart from the Ulster Unionist Party in December 2014. It guaranteed a HIU for the North as well as other entities such as the Independent Commission on Information Retrieval, ICIR, the oral history archive and so on. Unfortunately, it was not intended to have a branch of the HIU or a separate HIU here. We held meetings about it with the then Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Coveney, and they seemed to set their faces against setting up a parallel HIU in this jurisdiction. It was recommended by Mr. Leahy as well, but that is kind of immaterial now because the British Government has reneged on the Stormont House Agreement.

There was a question about other recommendations Mr. Leahy made. As far as I know, none of them has been implemented. I certainly have not been made aware if they have been.